TV SPORTS; NFL Films Could Make Old Games New Again

Then the Classic Sports Network (now ESPN Classic) came along, offering an ever-expanding selection of vintage Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association and National Hockey League games, as well as old tennis, college basketball and college football telecasts.

But no National Football League games. We've seen the NFL Films versions. They're fine, but they're league productions. Grand as they are, they are cinematic propaganda.

So while the World Series, the N.B.A. finals, the Stanley Cup finals, the N.C.A.A. men's tournaments and bowl games aplenty are standard fare on ESPN Classic, no Super Bowls have been shown in their original form since they were first telecast, a video crime akin to there being no ''Honeymooners'' reruns.

Who wouldn't want to see the originals, as called by Curt Gowdy and Al DeRogatis on NBC? Or by the CBS fun bunch of Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshier? Or how about last year's, on ABC, which one could analyze for signs of tension between Al Michaels and Boomer Esiason?

''In years past,'' he said, ''the N.F.L. owned the tapes of the games, but the networks owned the images.'' But the new contract gives the league complete ownership.

''So it is possible that we would pick selected games and release them for broadcast,'' Sabol added. ''There's a group of die-hard fans who want to see the games, but when they're three hours long, it diminishes the enjoyment. So we're thinking of taking the games, and removing the commercials. I think it will happen, but it will take time.''

If the Super Bowls are the trove's most valuable artifacts, then viewers would have to live without two of them. ''Super Bowls I and II were not saved,'' Sabol said. ''They were erased to tape soap operas.''

And some of the older ones in storage are deteriorating and would need to be restored before being resurrected for air.

Sabol said the old games could be seen on the ESPN networks, or become the building blocks of an all-N.F.L. cable channel.

''There's been talk for years about a channel from owners like Jerry Jones and Bob Kraft,'' he said. ''So you wouldn't see these games anywhere else. It'll be a business decision that goes to the owners.''

Sabol himself is at his 35th Super Bowl and the first one since some of his archives became available to Internet users of NFL.com and its spinoff, superbowl.com. Users can view great moments from the previous 34 games, highlights from the Giants' and Ravens' 2000 seasons, observe goings-on in Tampa, like news conferences, and check out players' video diaries.

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''Our whole library, 100 million feet of film, or 46,000 hours, is being digitized and made available to the Web site,'' Sabol said. ''It will take 10 years to get it done. Eventually, it will all be available.''

Through all those years, Sabol has been shooting the Super Bowls for a season-ending NFL Films program, overseeing their production. His indelible memory was etched in 1967, right after Green Bay's victory over Kansas City in what became known as Super Bowl I.

''I went into the locker room to shoot Vince Lombardi at a press conference, and people were saying afterward that he had been so confident of winning,'' he said. ''But I'd been at a Green Bay practice in Santa Barbara where he said that everything they had achieved until then would be meaningless if they lost. During the interview, I saw that he had knotted his necktie so tight in a Windsor knot, squeezed the knot to the size of a penny, and was trying to get it off. And Dad Brashier, the equipment manager, had to cut it off of him with a pair of shears.''

ABC Sports seemed to have injected some sanity into Super Bowl pregame programming with only four hours of pregame last year. Now, CBS has pumped it back up to six, one short of what Fox topped out at two years ago.

From noon to 1 p.m. Eastern, CBS shows off the synergy of the Viacom corporate family with a Super Bowl version of MTV's ''TRL'' or ''Total Request Live.'' The show (usually televised on weekday afternoons and populated by screaming teenagers), features hip songs I've never heard chosen by hip, young people or hip, young football players. Note: the favorite song of the Giants' Tiki Barber is ''Fly Away,'' by Lenny Kravitz. Somehow I knew that.

''We're doing the football-theme 'TRL' to attract people to us at noon who may not watch football,'' said Sean McManus, the president of CBS Sports. ''If people stick around afterwards, that's great. It's a good branding opportunity to get 'TRL' in front of a much broader audience.''

MTV was also responsible for last night's ''Super Bowl Uncensored,'' which did not require a censor and was not to be controversial.

Why didn't Papa Viacom ordain the inclusion of Nickelodeon characters at the Super Bowl? Why not a few Rugrats grilling Ray Lewis, or SpongeBob SquarePants replacing Phil Simms as the host of the ''2000 All-Iron Team'' from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.?

From 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., CBS will analyze the game, requiring an hour more than the game takes to be played.

Each year, we hear that the lessons of past pre-Super Bowl snorefests have been learned. We know the best that can be said of them is ''That's not bad.''